Short-Range Missiles Should Be Next on Arms Agenda

Passing almost unnoticed amid all the talk about a possible arms-control breakthrough at the summit meeting next weekend was a little story from Bonn. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, West German foreign minister, served notice that any agreement limiting medium-range missiles in Europe must also include a “binding commitment” to negotiate follow-on cuts in short-range missile systems.

The question is whether President Reagan is prepared to go to the mat with the Soviets in behalf of the West German concern.

The President is under great pressure to produce some concrete progress toward a new arms-control agreement at his meeting in Iceland with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. And everybody seems to agree that the best prospect for agreement lies in negotiations for the limitation of medium-range missiles in Europe.

Not many people in Washington--or in Bonn, for that matter--are anxious to become spoilsports by insisting that there be no deal on medium-range missiles unless the Russians are also willing to roll back their short-range missiles.

This political reality should not be allowed to obscure the importance of dealing with the threat posed by Soviet short-range ballistic missiles--SS-21s, SS-22s and SS-23s--if not now, then soon.

Public discussions of the Soviet missile threat in Europe have centered almost entirely on the nuclear-armed SS-20s, which the Russians began deploying in 1977. The Soviets have now deployed more than 260 of these missiles, bearing a total of almost 800 warheads, within range of every conceivable target in Europe.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in response, is well on the way toward deploying 572 single-warhead ballistic and cruise missiles supplied by the United States.

Negotiations toward the reduction of these medium-range missiles have indeed made encouraging progress. So far, though, the Russians are still resisting U.S. demands that the missile ceiling apply to the SS-20s deployed in Asia as well as in Europe. And it seems even more unlikely that they will agree to U.S. proposals to include short-range missiles in whatever agreement emerges.

The short-range missiles are not a trivial matter. You can make a case, in fact, that they pose a greater threat to European security--and therefore to U.S. interests--than the longer-range SS-20s.

Several hundred SS-21s, SS-22s and SS-23s are already in place, and their number is still growing. These weapons, deployed in Eastern Europe, are replacing other short-range ballistic missiles that the Soviets deployed as long ago as 1965.

The new missiles, though called tactical missiles, are capable of hitting targets as far as 550 miles away--putting them within reach of most of Europe. Obviously they are more than mere battlefield weapons.

Crank in the speed of ballistic missiles, and you find that these weapons have flight times ranging from a chilling three minutes for the SS-21 to nine minutes for the SS-22. It is these short warning times, plus greatly improved accuracies, that have NATO planners worried.

All three missiles can carry nuclear weapons. But Western defense experts expect that if the Soviets ever invade they will use the short-range missiles first with conventional, non-nuclear warheads and possibly chemical weapons in hopes of scoring a quick victory.

This country’s European allies were exploring the possibility of an anti-tactical missile defense--ATBM, in military lingo --well before Ronald Reagan made his “Star Wars” speech of 1983. There is no question, moreover, that the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative has served to focus European attention on what needs to be done.

It turns out that defending against short-range ballistic missiles is much easier than erecting a defense against intercontinental missiles. As pointed out by West German defense analyst Thomas Enders, the most logical course is to build on the existing Patriot anti-aircraft system in order to give it the capability to shoot down advanced cruise missiles and to blunt an attack by short-range ballistic missiles. (The Soviets, it might be noted, are following precisely this course.)

Such a system, Enders notes, does not have to be leakproof. Even a partial capability would help to give Soviet war planners pause.

From the European perspective, Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative is more a hindrance than a help at present. SDI technology will become applicable late in this century, but for now the political embarrassment of an SDI connection outweighs the technological benefit.

The West Germans, French and British are exploring the possibilities of joint development of a European ATBM. But even a first-phase ATBM program, building on anti-aircraft technology, would be expensive.

Everybody agrees that it would be far better to solve the problem through an international agreement drastically limiting the arsenal of short-range missiles on each side. But so far the Soviets, benefitting from the lack of sustained pressure from the Western side, are not interested.

At this point no one is really saying that a deal on medium-range missiles should be made hostage to a simultaneous agreement limiting short-range ballistic missiles. But if Reagan has any kind of backbone he will back up Genscher’s demand for an irreversible Soviet commitment to make short-range missiles the next order of business.